William B Stoecker

The global warming lie

December 17, 2008 |  195 comments
Image Credit: sxc.hu Most of us by now have wised up to the fact that the controlled elite media routinely lie or withold important information from the public about such matters as the JFK murder, 9/11, or the London subway bombing. Most of us also know that the standard tactic for the big lie is to tell it loudly and often and publish nothing that contradicts it. And what have the elites been shouting at us over and over and over for the last few years? They have been warning us about the deadly peril of global warming caused by our consumption of fossil fuels which put carbon dioxide, a known greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. This, they claim, will warm the Earth so that ice sheets will melt and we will all be flooded, says Chicken Little, by the rising seas. Since that, apparently, did not frighten people enough, they have even suggested that warmer weather could cause a sudden ice age by upsetting ocean currents. They have shown detailed, computer generated maps of the future climate (this from people who cannot even predict tomorrow's weather in your home town) showing, among other things, desertfication. This works because most people associate deserts with heat and fail to realize that a warmer Earth would mean more evaporation from the seas, hence more clouds, hence more precipitation, not less.

Their solutions to this imagined danger include proposals for a UN tax on fossil fuel consumption that would lower living standards and make the New World Order even more powerful, along with a host of regulations that would apply only to the developed countries, where the citizens still have some semblance of freedom and prosperity. The rules would not apply to, for example, China and India, where coal could continue to be burned without limit. So how would that limit CO2 buildup? They are a little hazy on the details.

They give us varying figures on the likely perecentage of CO2 increase over the coming decades, and the average numerically challenged person can imagine that our atmosphere is, say, ten percent CO2 and a (for example) five percent increase would bring the total to fifteen percent. Here we see the value of dumbing down the schools for the last few decades. It is not ten percent CO2 and that is not the way to compute percentages. As well as can be measured, the atmosphere at present is .038 percent CO2, meaning less than four percent of one percent, or less than four parts per ten thousand. Even if it were to increase by ten percent, that would only be ten percent of three point eight percent of one percent, or less than four parts in every hundred thousand. On the face of it, it seems wildly improbable that such minute increases could cause significant climatic change. In fact, in a vast, dynamic system like Earth's atmosphere, where air and moisture are circulating and CO2 varies from one area to another and from one day to the next, and can be dissolved in or released from bodies of water, scientists cannot even measure such small changes with any certainty. In other words they do not even know for sure that the CO2 content is increasing at all. Furthermore, the media elites only quote those scientists who, knowing where their next check is coming from and what the results expected from them are, parrot the party line. In fact, a great many climatologists, seldom quoted, have stated that global warming has not been proven at all.

Not only can we not measure CO2 with any certainty; so vast and dynamic is our atmosphere, and so complex the interactions between it and those enormous heat reservoirs, the oceans, that we cannot even be certain that the temperature is rising.

We are encouraged to forget that many of the prophets of global warming were, as recently as the nineteen seventies, warning us about global cooling and an imminent ice age. The sky, it seems, is always falling; it just falls in different directions. Many of these same people (and, of course, the elite media) also predicted that a nuclear war would cause vast firestorms, and the resultant smoke would block the Sun's rays and bring about a nuclear winter. But to do that they had to ignore the CO2 inevitably produced by the fires; now they do the exact opposite and focus on the CO2 while ignoring the light-blocking smoke from car exhausts and coal burning power plants.

Furthermore, a temperature increase, if it did happen, would, to some extent, be self limiting. More evaporation and more clouds mean more water vapor, which is also a greenhouse gas, but also more reflection of sunlight away from the Earth by the clouds, and the net effect of these two opposites tends to be a slight cooling. Not only that, but the extra CO2 would stimulate plant growth, since plants metabolize CO2 during photosynthesis, and there will also be more and faster plant growth throughout the world because of the longer growing seasons on a warmer Earth, and more vegetation in desert and semi-arid regions, now receiving more rain. This increased vegetation will take more CO2 out of the atmosphere, so that the CO2 increase also would be, to some extent, self limiting. Most people would argue that a warmer and wetter world with more vegetation would be, overall, a good thing both for natural ecosystems and for humanity. But the environmental extremists seem to be opposed to any change whatever, ignoring the fact that, over millions of years, Earth's climate has always changed and will continue to do so, regardless of human activities.

And we are dependent on fossil fuels due to these same extremists. The people now warning us about global warming are, for the most part, the same ones who have long opposed all nuclear power. They cite the disaster at Chernobyl, conveniently forgetting that this was an inherently bad design, never used in the West, and that the plant was poorly maintained and operated, and that the meltdown, while serious, failed to produce the kind of global catastrophe they had always predicted. They cite the leakage at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in the US, but fail to mention that no one died (and there was never a later increase in cancer or leukemia in the area or downwind), or that the design flaw that caused the incident was identified and corrected in all US reactors. They fail to mention the exemplary safety record of French reactors, or the fact that inherently safe reactor designs now exist. They focus on the waste storage issue, but, in the US at least, this is largely a problem of their own creation, as their court actions have prevented removal of waste to safe sites deep underground in arid regions. These same environmentalists have opposed building new hydroelectric power plants and have even called for the demolition of existing dams. When wind generated electricity seemed uneconomical and impractical they supported it, but once improved technology, economies of scale, and rising fossil fuel prices made it a little more competitive, they began opposing it, citing the danger that a few birds might fly into the blades.There are any number of ways to reduce bird strikes, but environmental extremists and their masters are not in the business of offering solutions, but rather of creating problems. And now, having made us overly dependent on fossil fuels, they want to take these away from us as well. If their secret goal was actually to impoverish, control, and even exterminate most of humanity they would not behave any differently.

And they ignore the fact, previously mentioned, that climate has always changed. Ice ages and periods of warming far beyond anything in modern times have come and gone without any human assistance. Many scientists believe that in the remote past there was at least one episode of global warming so extreme that most of the life on the planet was wiped out, and at least one ice age when glaciers and sea ice reached the equator. The last ice age ended some eleven thousand years ago, but then the Earth continued to warm, and between five and ten thousand years ago it was warmer than any time in recorded history. Around seven or eight thousand years ago the world was so warm and wet that the Sahara and other deserts were grasslands and even forests, with no fossil fuel consumption anywhere and no catastrophic rise in sea levels. Between three thousand and twenty five hundred years ago the Earth became colder and dryer, probably due to a massive volcanic eruption, and this may have brought about the end of Egypt's Old Kingdom. The climate then improved, but another period of cold and drought began in 536 A.D., probably also caused by a volcano (possibly Krakatoa), and this certainly contributed to the fall of Rome, and may have stimulated barbarian migrations, which mostly went from cold or dry regions to warmer or wetter ones. From about 1100 A.D. to about 1300 A.D. the Earth enjoyed the Medieval Warm Period and Europe climbed out of the Dark Ages only to be plunged into poverty and plague (there had also been an outbreak after 536) by the Little Ice Age. There is no evidence that human activity caused any of this.

But, interestingly enough, solar activity did. At least part of the Little Ice Age, from about 1650 to 1700, coincided with what is called the Maunder Minimum, when sunspot activity was very low (observations had not been possible before this, since there were no telescopes). Sunspots normally follow an eleven year cycle, and when the Sun is brighter and hotter there are more sunspots. The reasons for this are not fully understood, and we do not know why, at times, this cycle is disrupted by major changes in the Sun's energy output, but it should surprise no one that there is a rough correlation, with a slight delay, between increased solar activity and increased temperatures here on Earth. In fact, until very recently, solar activity has been much higher than it was during most of the last four hundred years. Perhaps that, rather than our fossil fuel consumption, accounts for the higher temperatures we may (or may not) be experiencing.

So what does all of this mean? Should we go to the opposite extreme and burn fossil fuels with abandon, or dam every river on Earth for hydroelectric power? Actually, there are many other alternatives. There are many other reasons why fossil fuels may not be the best option. We can develop nuclear and wind energy and research so called free or virtual energy. But we cannot, and must not, allow the elites and their lackeys to panic us into submission to their will.

William B Stoecker[!gad]Most of us by now have wised up to the fact that the controlled elite media routinely lie or withold important information from the public about such matters as the JFK murder, 9/11, or the London subway bombing. Most of us also know that the standard tactic for the big lie is to tell it loudly and often and publish nothing that contradicts it. And what have the elites been shouting at us over and over and over for the last few years? They have been warning us about the deadly peril of global warming caused by our consumption of fossil fuels which put carbon dioxide, a known greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. This, they claim, will warm the Earth so that ice sheets will melt and we will all be flooded, says Chicken Little, by the rising seas. Since that, apparently, did not frighten people enough, they have even suggested that warmer weather could cause a sudden ice age by upsetting ocean currents. They have shown detailed, computer generated maps of the future climate (this from people who cannot even predict tomorrow's weather in your home town) showing, among other things, desertfication. This works because most people associate deserts with heat and fail to realize that a warmer Earth would mean more evaporation from the seas, hence more clouds, hence more precipitation, not less.

Their solutions to this imagined danger include proposals for a UN tax on fossil fuel consumption that would lower living standards and make the New World Order even more powerful, along with a host of regulations that would apply only to the developed countries, where the citizens still have some semblance of freedom and prosperity. The rules would not apply to, for example, China and India, where coal could continue to be burned without limit. So how would that limit CO2 buildup? They are a little hazy on the details.

They give us varying figures on the likely perecentage of CO2 increase over the coming decades, and the average numerically challenged person can imagine that our atmosphere is, say, ten percent CO2 and a (for example) five percent increase would bring the total to fifteen percent. Here we see the value of dumbing down the schools for the last few decades. It is not ten percent CO2 and that is not the way to compute percentages. As well as can be measured, the atmosphere at present is .038 percent CO2, meaning less than four percent of one percent, or less than four parts per ten thousand. Even if it were to increase by ten percent, that would only be ten percent of three point eight percent of one percent, or less than four parts in every hundred thousand. On the face of it, it seems wildly improbable that such minute increases could cause significant climatic change. In fact, in a vast, dynamic system like Earth's atmosphere, where air and moisture are circulating and CO2 varies from one area to another and from one day to the next, and can be dissolved in or released from bodies of water, scientists cannot even measure such small changes with any certainty. In other words they do not even know for sure that the CO2 content is increasing at all. Furthermore, the media elites only quote those scientists who, knowing where their next check is coming from and what the results expected from them are, parrot the party line. In fact, a great many climatologists, seldom quoted, have stated that global warming has not been proven at all.

Not only can we not measure CO2 with any certainty; so vast and dynamic is our atmosphere, and so complex the interactions between it and those enormous heat reservoirs, the oceans, that we cannot even be certain that the temperature is rising.

We are encouraged to forget that many of the prophets of global warming were, as recently as the nineteen seventies, warning us about global cooling and an imminent ice age. The sky, it seems, is always falling; it just falls in different directions. Many of these same people (and, of course, the elite media) also predicted that a nuclear war would cause vast firestorms, and the resultant smoke would block the Sun's rays and bring about a nuclear winter. But to do that they had to ignore the CO2 inevitably produced by the fires; now they do the exact opposite and focus on the CO2 while ignoring the light-blocking smoke from car exhausts and coal burning power plants.

Furthermore, a temperature increase, if it did happen, would, to some extent, be self limiting. More evaporation and more clouds mean more water vapor, which is also a greenhouse gas, but also more reflection of sunlight away from the Earth by the clouds, and the net effect of these two opposites tends to be a slight cooling. Not only that, but the extra CO2 would stimulate plant growth, since plants metabolize CO2 during photosynthesis, and there will also be more and faster plant growth throughout the world because of the longer growing seasons on a warmer Earth, and more vegetation in desert and semi-arid regions, now receiving more rain. This increased vegetation will take more CO2 out of the atmosphere, so that the CO2 increase also would be, to some extent, self limiting. Most people would argue that a warmer and wetter world with more vegetation would be, overall, a good thing both for natural ecosystems and for humanity. But the environmental extremists seem to be opposed to any change whatever, ignoring the fact that, over millions of years, Earth's climate has always changed and will continue to do so, regardless of human activities.

And we are dependent on fossil fuels due to these same extremists. The people now warning us about global warming are, for the most part, the same ones who have long opposed all nuclear power. They cite the disaster at Chernobyl, conveniently forgetting that this was an inherently bad design, never used in the West, and that the plant was poorly maintained and operated, and that the meltdown, while serious, failed to produce the kind of global catastrophe they had always predicted. They cite the leakage at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in the US, but fail to mention that no one died (and there was never a later increase in cancer or leukemia in the area or downwind), or that the design flaw that caused the incident was identified and corrected in all US reactors. They fail to mention the exemplary safety record of French reactors, or the fact that inherently safe reactor designs now exist. They focus on the waste storage issue, but, in the US at least, this is largely a problem of their own creation, as their court actions have prevented removal of waste to safe sites deep underground in arid regions. These same environmentalists have opposed building new hydroelectric power plants and have even called for the demolition of existing dams. When wind generated electricity seemed uneconomical and impractical they supported it, but once improved technology, economies of scale, and rising fossil fuel prices made it a little more competitive, they began opposing it, citing the danger that a few birds might fly into the blades.There are any number of ways to reduce bird strikes, but environmental extremists and their masters are not in the business of offering solutions, but rather of creating problems. And now, having made us overly dependent on fossil fuels, they want to take these away from us as well. If their secret goal was actually to impoverish, control, and even exterminate most of humanity they would not behave any differently.

And they ignore the fact, previously mentioned, that climate has always changed. Ice ages and periods of warming far beyond anything in modern times have come and gone without any human assistance. Many scientists believe that in the remote past there was at least one episode of global warming so extreme that most of the life on the planet was wiped out, and at least one ice age when glaciers and sea ice reached the equator. The last ice age ended some eleven thousand years ago, but then the Earth continued to warm, and between five and ten thousand years ago it was warmer than any time in recorded history. Around seven or eight thousand years ago the world was so warm and wet that the Sahara and other deserts were grasslands and even forests, with no fossil fuel consumption anywhere and no catastrophic rise in sea levels. Between three thousand and twenty five hundred years ago the Earth became colder and dryer, probably due to a massive volcanic eruption, and this may have brought about the end of Egypt's Old Kingdom. The climate then improved, but another period of cold and drought began in 536 A.D., probably also caused by a volcano (possibly Krakatoa), and this certainly contributed to the fall of Rome, and may have stimulated barbarian migrations, which mostly went from cold or dry regions to warmer or wetter ones. From about 1100 A.D. to about 1300 A.D. the Earth enjoyed the Medieval Warm Period and Europe climbed out of the Dark Ages only to be plunged into poverty and plague (there had also been an outbreak after 536) by the Little Ice Age. There is no evidence that human activity caused any of this.

But, interestingly enough, solar activity did. At least part of the Little Ice Age, from about 1650 to 1700, coincided with what is called the Maunder Minimum, when sunspot activity was very low (observations had not been possible before this, since there were no telescopes). Sunspots normally follow an eleven year cycle, and when the Sun is brighter and hotter there are more sunspots. The reasons for this are not fully understood, and we do not know why, at times, this cycle is disrupted by major changes in the Sun's energy output, but it should surprise no one that there is a rough correlation, with a slight delay, between increased solar activity and increased temperatures here on Earth. In fact, until very recently, solar activity has been much higher than it was during most of the last four hundred years. Perhaps that, rather than our fossil fuel consumption, accounts for the higher temperatures we may (or may not) be experiencing.

So what does all of this mean? Should we go to the opposite extreme and burn fossil fuels with abandon, or dam every river on Earth for hydroelectric power? Actually, there are many other alternatives. There are many other reasons why fossil fuels may not be the best option. We can develop nuclear and wind energy and research so called free or virtual energy. But we cannot, and must not, allow the elites and their lackeys to panic us into submission to their will.

William B Stoecker Comments (195)

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